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Susan Fennell booster group in the hot seat for using mayor’s office resources amid expenses scandal

Contact information on Fennell's Catch the Spirit Team website pointed to the mayor's office — until it was suddenly removed Tuesday after councillors and the Star raised questions.

Mayor Susan Fennell, facing an audit into her liberal spending, has said her private booster group is funded privately. But councillors question the use of mayor's office resources to run it. (DAVID COOPER / TORONTO STAR)

Brampton councillors frustrated with a lack of disclosure about Mayor Susan Fennell’s spending and the real cost to taxpayers say an upcoming audit is the only way to get details.

One of the points of criticism has been the use of resources in the mayor’s office to promote the Mayor Susan Fennel Catch the Spirit Team, a private booster group — which until Tuesday listed contact information for the mayor’s office on the group’s website. That information was taken off the site shortly after the Star began asking questions about it.

“I just asked about the mayor’s Catch the Spirit Team two weeks ago in council. She said, publicly, no taxpayer dollars are used for it,” said Councillor Bob Callahan, who for years has sought to learn in council meetings whether taxpayer dollars have gone to Fennell’s private booster groups, galas and golf tournaments. He was told it was funded through Stepping Out For Brampton, the private gala that used to be called the Mayor Susan Fennell gala before she resigned as chair of its board under pressure from the Star and others to disclose its finances.

“I have tried to exercise my power as a councillor; now the audit will be the way to get everything out in the open,” Callahan said.

Fellow councillor John Sanderson, who two weeks ago led a council push to get an independent forensic audit of Fennell’s spending, which will also include all councillors’ expenses, asked Tuesday why the Mayor’s Catch the Spirit Team website listed her city hall office and phone number for group members to contact.

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“If there’s a city phone number there and it’s in the mayor’s office, who’s paying for that phone line and the staff that’s answering it?” he wondered.

On Tuesday, the Star posed the same question to Fennell in an email that included links to the team web page and a web page for Catch the Spirit on the City of Brampton website.

But by the end of the day the Mayor’s Catch the Spirit website had been altered so that her contact information at city hall was no longer there.

“Now, all of a sudden, it disappears,” Sanderson said. “This is just another example of why we need an audit to get to the bottom of all of this.”

Fennell did not comment on the website issue, or why the information was removed on Tuesday. She did not respond to the Star’s request that she acknowledge that Catch the Spirit had been indirectly subsidized through city purchases of tickets to her events. Her spokesperson, Michael Genova, said in an email response that “Catch the Spirit is a volunteer community group, as part of Stepping out for Brampton.”

It was revealed in January that $170,000 of taxpayer money had gone to the mayor’s gala and her golf tournament through City of Brampton ticket purchases that councillors had not been informed about. The practice was halted. But questions about Fennell’s booster groups have lingered.

The Star also learned Fennell has a $1,400-a-month leased Lincoln Navigator SUV paid for by taxpayers.

Brampton residents have also been angered by Fennell’s $213,000 salary in 2012, which made her the highest paid mayor in Canada. That figure does not include an extra $15,000 she earned for sitting on the Peel Region police board, her $23,500 car allowance or her $46,000 driver.

“The audit will be a good way to get back to the business of running the city,” Callahan said, “rather than having to question everything she’s spending the taxpayers’ money on.”

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